Preparing for year two in business June 14 2014, 0 Comments

I can't believe it's June already, where has the last six months gone? How often do you feel like 24 hours is never enough and even with double the amount of time you will never manage to do everything on the to do list?

As you can tell the first six months of this year....allegedly the quieter months have been no such thing. I've been hard at work reevaluating my business, after all there is no point learning lessons if you don't act on them is there?

So you ask? what did you learn in the first twelve months of business? Well for one, not to book a fair for each weekend meaning you work seven days a week without a break! What idiot would do that? its against all EU regulations! lets call it research rather than stupidity. About a handful worked well, the others were lets say an opportunity to visit other parts of the county and meet other crafters which although lovely was hardly the best use of precious weekends.

Lesson number one learnt ...be selective about the type and quality of show, ensure it has a great reputation, great following and attracts your ideal clientele. Quality rather than quantity and hey suddenly you have a life back! Not rocket science but a painful lesson.

Lesson number two, don't try to please everyone, decide your market, price point and a few well designed, finished and packaged collections and stick with it. Attempting to be cheap, expensive, women's, men's, kids, and everything in between gets confusing and looks a mess on a small display. A few well executed ranges, well displayed looks far more appealing and sophisticated.

Lesson number three, invest in long lasting, good quality displays. Your work is only as good as it's perceived and your display can make a world of difference when you only have a 2x1 m space to attract people. Equally time and effort spent designing paperwork, branding, packaging, etc makes a world of difference.

So following these revelations and changes to my business plan I have kicked off year two with six wonderful high end exhibitions, bespoke packaging, my goddess range of five exclusive limited edition collections and some up market display goodies. I will let you know in due course how it goes and have no doubt that once again it will be a year of revelation and learning.